


and i could try to run but it would be useless

by bex_xo



Series: so hold my hand honey you like making me wait for it [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, High School teacher!Podrick, Lots of Cursing, Lyanna x Wylla is simply created from pure spite but I love it, Original Characters because Pod needed students, Romance, School Reunion, photographer!Arya, should probably split this into two parts but we all know that's not how I roll, the author still doesn't know how to tag, the setting is vague on purpose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 00:06:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13986195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bex_xo/pseuds/bex_xo
Summary: “So, uh, I hear you’re like, half in love with me.” She says in response and can’t help the giggle that escapes when he nods his head half heartedly and shrugs.“I see you met Nell and Brea. Good girls. Can’t keep their mouths shut though.”“Oh, come on Mr. Payne.” She says teasingly as she skootches herself just a little bit closer. “Admit that you put them there on purpose, you knew they would catch my name and spill the beans.”Podrick rolls his eyes at her, but grins again and reaches out to run his fingers down her left arm, goosebumps trailing in its wake.“The thought may have crossed my mind.” He says in a low voice as he steps more fully into her space and links their fingers together for the first time in eight years.Arya stares down at their interlocked hands and can’t shake the feeling of how right this feels, or of how much she wants to run right now.***title taken from Never Be the Same by Camila Cabello





	and i could try to run but it would be useless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snacky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snacky/gifts).



> my dearest darling Snacky prompted Meeting again at a high schoo reunion for Podrya, and I thought since I just wrote a Podrya high school AU that I should just stick to the same 'verse and go from there. Obviously I had to adjust the prompt slightly because of reasons, mostly that Podrick is roughly two years older and did not graduate with Arya, but I think the fic works rather nicely still.

Arya stares down at the embossed, thick cardstock invitation with what can only be described as a look of disdain.  
  
 _On behalf of the North Kings Landing High Class of 2020, The Alumni Association invites you to the 10 th year reunion dinner and dance to be held Saturday, May 28th at the Red Keep Catering Hall. Cocktail hour to start at 5pm in the lounge adjacent to the Grand Ballroom. A Buffet style dinner starts serving at 6:30pm, followed by a presentation from the Class of 2030. A live DJ and dancing to follow until 11:30pm._  
  
Normally this would not be her thing; she hadn’t even kept her current address up to date with the Alumni Association in the last few years, but of course whoever it was that put this thing together was smart enough to send it to Jon and Sansa’s place, only to have it hand delivered by her sister at Saturday brunch this morning.  
  
“I’m not going,” she says flatly before she takes a bite of her eggs benedict.  
  
“I knew you would say that. Which is why I took the liberty of calling the Alumni office and reserving your spot for you this morning. You’re welcome,” Sansa says with a satisfied grin and a self-congratulatory gulp of her mimosa.  
  
“Opening another person’s mail is a federal offense, you know.”  
  
“Oh yeah, who’s going to arrest me?”  
  
Arya smirks over her own mimosa.  
  
“Your husband.”  
  
 Sansa gives her a look that Arya doesn’t really like.  
  
“Who do you think got the letter opener from the desk, Arya? Gods, what am I, an amateur? Jon practically jumped at the opportunity to see what was in the envelope.”  
  
“Gods. Outside the family, no one even knows I’ve come back to the city, Sansa. It’s not even like I’m still friends with anyone from NKLH anyway?”  
  
“Well yeah, but just think about it this way. We’ll get you a killer dress - Margie is a genius with these things, and I’ll set you up with my hair girl, Myrcella. We’ll make sure you look  _to die for_  when you walk into that reunion, and everyone is going to want to know all about your globetrotting as a photographer,” Sansa tells her with rapid fire precision, which only means she has been contemplating this since she opened the card earlier this week.  
  
“And you know… it’s not entirely true that you’re not friends with anyone from school these days…” her sister nudges her under the table with a wedged heel.  
  
Arya sighs. Of course Sansa takes the opportunity to bring up her high-school-and-some-of-college ex-boyfriend, Podrick Payne. They broke up in between her sophomore and junior years of college, shortly after his graduation and the subsequent, abrupt, changes to all their plans for the future. No, she isn’t still bitter, not entirely anyway, and yes, she’s the one that called it all off when he was faced with deciding between grad school and a once in a lifetime opportunity to tour with a major musical company on a national tour as part of the stage crew.  
  
She was not willing to be the one that kept him from that dream, and while he wanted to try long distance, Arya was young and afraid and  _stupidly noble,_  and, granted, probably the only person outside her family who really cared about his freedom even while she wallowed in self-pity for her junior and senior years of college. After graduation, she threw herself into working full time and made a name for herself in the photography world, as a sometimes-fashion but mostly-celebrity weddings and celebrations photographer. Arya had an uncanny ability at staying discreet that her celebrity clientele loved, but honestly it was because all she really had in life was the cameras in her hand and her cat, Hugo.  
  
She and Podrick have stayed friends in a Facebook-only-kinda-way and for all his nerdiness, Podrick was not one for social media. His page is always rather empty and out of date, his current employer being listed as the third tour company he worked with after their break up, but Arya knew for a fact that tour had closed four years ago. And no, she did not look it up herself. Sansa sent her the link to the tours closing notice from some Broadway blog she followed, thank you very much.  
  
“Yeah well, thank the gods you’re the one that graduated with Podrick and not me. Did he even go to your reunion two years ago?”  
  
“Of course he was there. And if you paid attention to me when we talk on the phone, you would know that he chatted with Jon and me nearly the whole night, and asked after you, and congratulated us on both our wedding and the birth of Lyra, you know, two years ago when this all happened. His Facebook might be  _way_  out dated, but he pays attention to what everyone has been up to. He was practically a part of the family for four years,” Sansa tells her as she picks at the fruit salad in front of her.  
  
“Yeah. I know, I was there,” is all Arya can reply with, and the ever-so-numb feeling that comes with the reminder that Podrick is not a part of the family any longer (and has not been for nearly eight years) washes over her.  
  
She orders a second mimosa.  
  
***  
  
In the course of two months, Arya has become less resigned to attending her reunion and maybe actually a little excited if she was being honest with herself. Sure, she was pretty popular in high school, she danced and played water polo and had a hot older boyfriend that most girls were jealous of, but that hot older boyfriend was also the center of her universe since their first kiss under that streetlight in his car after the musical. So while she had tons of people she hung out with as a teenager, she now has just a few friends that have actually stuck.  
  
She does, however, have one good female friend from high school that she’s still in contact with, Lyanna Mormont, who also happens to live in the city and has insisted that drinks the night before the dreaded reunion are in order. And it doesn’t hurt that Lyanna’s girlfriend, Wylla, owns this bar, and has promised the two brunettes they can drink on the house for the night.  
  
Lyanna mentions something about paying her girlfriend back in sexual favors as the green-haired beauty seats them in a booth near the back of the dimly lit bar. Wylla just blows a kiss their way before she heads back to the bar with their first drink order.  
  
“Gods, I can’t believe I’m stupid-in-love with that woman. How is this my life?” her friend ponders dreamily as she fiddles with the bracelet around her left wrist.  
  
“If anyone deserves stupid-happy-love, it’s you, Lyanna. Remember when you tried to date my brother?” Arya asks with a mischievous grin.  
  
Lyanna scoffs.  
  
“Rickon can still get it, babe. It just turns out that I am not  _as_  into dick as I am into admiring the male body. But if I’m ever looking for a sperm donor in the future, Rick’s already offered to be my baby daddy, and we would make a  _damn_  cute kid.”  
  
The two women burst into laughter when a very confused waiter brings them their drinks moments later, and he hurriedly skitters off after placing the drinks on the table.  
  
“So girl,” Lyanna starts after taking a drink of her Seven and Seven. “What have you been up to since coming back to the city?”  
  
Arya looks down at her own drink and runs her finger around the rim of her Tom Collins.  
  
“I’m still doing celebrity weddings and I’m still traveling  _a lot_. Honestly, not much has changed really, it’s just nice to have a home base, I guess? Sansa and Jon are literally three blocks away and they check in on Hugo for me when I’m out of town,  _and_  getting to be Auntie Arya to Lyra is a lot of fun. Plus, Robb and Margie are only a couple hours away with their kids and yeah, Bran is off North, but Rickon is still mostly here and my parents visit a lot. I haven’t been this surrounded by Starks since high school.”  
  
“And of course you get to see the only friend from high school that really matters on the regular now,” Lyanna adds with a wicked smile.  
  
“Oh yeah, of course. Seeing Wylla all the time has been great,” Arya teases.  
  
She narrowly ducks the wadded-up cocktail napkin that hurdles her way.  
  
“So, don’t look now, but there’s a pretty cute guy over at the bar who keeps looking your way,” Lyanna announces twenty minutes later as they are finishing drink number two.  
  
“I thought you liked girls,” is Arya’s reply, unwilling as she is to sneak a glance over her shoulder to check.  
  
“As I said before, I can appreciate a man aesthetically as long as he keeps his dick away from me.”  
  
“Well, is he still looking at me?” she asks impatiently while twisting her napkin in her hands.  
  
She should have known she would not like the answer she was about to receive when Lyanna bites her lip, hard.  
  
“Well… umm.”  
  
“Arya?” A voice, no, a ghost from the past, says behind her.  
  
It’s like ice in her veins as she suddenly freezes up and takes a very noticeable breath in to steel herself before she turns in the booth.  
  
“Hello Podrick,” she says in what she hopes is an easy-breezy tone, but what is honestly nothing more than a whisper.  
  
“Hey. I uh… I saw you from over at the bar and umm, figured I would say hi,” says her former first  _everything_ before turning his attention to the other woman in the booth. He gives her a small nod. “Lyanna.”  
  
“Podrick,” her friend returns with no amount of pleasantry.  
  
“So, uh, what are you doing in the city?” he asks just as she is about to do the same.  
  
Of course that almost happens, of course after eight years he can still manage to think the same thing she does.  
  
“Class reunion. Sansa kinda RSVP’d for me, so I figured I might as well go. Also, you know, catching up with Lyanna and Wylla has been great.”  
  
No mention of being back in the city full time, of her small but nice apartment a few blocks away, of the cat she named Hugo, after Victor Hugo, who wrote the novel that inspired the musical that took him away from her.  
  
“Oh, yeah, I saw that in the Alumni newsletter.”  
  
Lyanna actually snorts.  
  
“Of course you read the Alumni newsletter. How very Podrick of you,” Lyanna says with a not so subtle roll of her eyes.  
  
“Did you just turn my name into a verb?” he replies with that wry grin that turned, no,  _turns_  her to mush.  
  
“Shut up, Payne,” Lyanna sneers as she pulls herself out of her seat and marches off to the bar and her girlfriend.  
  
“She does  _not_  like me,” Podrick says as he slides into the seat Lyanna just occupied.  
  
“Yeah, no shit. Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about you right now either,” she replies, and okay, that was low.  
  
Eight years later and his eyebrows still shoot up his forehead in the same exact way.  
  
“You told me to go. I would have stayed, I would have kept to our plan and been happy to do it.”  
  
“Yeah well, I wasn’t just going to let you turn down your fucking dream job because your twenty-year-old girlfriend had a degree to finish and couldn’t bear the thought of her boyfriend traveling all across the country surrounded by gorgeous woman who had things in common with him. I had to cut you loose,” she half-yells at him as all the hurt and rage she’s felt over the last few years just spilling out.  
  
Podrick just purses his lips and nods, and then suddenly he lets loose with a dark chuckle that’s unlike anything she has ever heard from him.  
  
“Cut me loose? Cut me fucking loose? You broke my godsdamn heart Arya, that’s what you did,” he tells her in a scathing tone before he drags himself out of the seat across from her.  
  
Unshed tears burn her in her eyes.  
  
“Why the hells are you in the city anyway Pod?” she catches herself saying before he has a chance to storm off.  
  
By some act of black magic, Podrick stops dead in his tracks and Arya sees him breathing through his nose before her turns back towards her.  
  
“I live here. I have for a while. Touring was great but living out of a suitcase takes its toll. Something you probably know all too well,” he says, far softer than she deserves.  
  
And with that, he gives her one last lingering look before making his way to the front of the bar and the exit.  
  
Lyanna buys her another Tom Collins that she drinks through silent tears.  
  
***  
  
“You look great,” Arya hears her brother-in-law say from the doorway of the guestroom Sansa and Margie dragged her to in order to get ready.  
  
She turns to look at where Jon leans against the door frame, black sweat pants and a grey KLPD shirt plus those goofy glasses he wears at home, with bare feet and a three-year-old attached to his leg.  
  
“You look like a princess, Auntie Arya.” Her dark-haired niece says shyly.  
  
Arya lets out an honest to goodness giggle.  
  
“She’s right, you know. Sansa and Margie are really talented at this, who knew?” Jon says of his wife and sister-in-law.  
  
“Right? Maybe they should do this professionally?” Arya says with a small amount of mocking when the two ladies in question emerge from the attached bathroom that they set up to act as a walk-in closet for the guest room.  
  
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” her sister says with no real venom as she sticks her tongue out at her husband and daughter.  
  
Margie simply flips Arya the bird as Jon scrambles to cover Lyra’s eyes and usher her out of the room.  
  
“How many world class photographers can say their sister and sister-in-law are also as equally talented in similar industries?” Sansa questions as she compares multiple pairs of similar looking shoes.  
  
Margaery took over her grandmother’s bridal design boutique after graduating from fashion school several years ago, though she’s successfully expanded the business to formal dresses of all kinds, while Sansa styles photoshoots all over Kings Landing, including ones for Margie’s business that Arya has shot in the past. The first big ad campaign Arya shot was for Rosegold, Margie’s label, and it’s also how she got into celebrity weddings. The rest, as they say, is history.  
  
“Probably just me,” she answers helpfully.  
  
“Wife?” Jon says from the doorway, his head peaks around the frame.  
  
“Husband?” Sansa chirps back from where she can’t decide between two pairs of nude pumps.  
  
“Family conference, and by that, I mean its exclusive to those of us with the last name Snow.” He answers when he sees Margie motion for him to enter the room.  
  
“Then call it Snow conference or something, would you Jon? We’re all family here,” Arya hollers at them as Sansa trots out to the hallway to “conference” with Jon.  
  
“He’s just making excuses to French her without little eyes around, or without us gagging,” Margie quips as she adjusts the curls their friend Myrcella placed artfully through her hair a few hours ago.  
  
Sansa returns a few moments later, smiling that smile that she thinks is secret but Arya knows means something, and honestly, Margie is probably right.  
  
Her sister-in-law mouths  _I told you so_ behind Sansa’s back and Arya can’t help but snicker.  
  
By the time she finally reaches Red Keep Catering it’s a quarter after five and dangerously close to just being  _late_  without the  _fashionably_  being attached to it.  
  
Lyanna and Wylla hand her a glass of champagne as soon as she makes her way to the tall table the two ladies are seated at, and they chat away with several other classmates that Arya hardly remembers, and gods she hates small talk.  
  
6pm rolls around quicker than anyone really wants it to, and the three women begrudgingly get in the endless queue to sign in and receive their name tags. The Student Ambassadors Club is helping run the event with the Alumni Association. Lyanna mentions that the teens get to count the hours for their community service prerequisite as a part of the membership, and Arya asks if the advisor is still Mr. Lannister, the librarian, and if his grief-beard he grew out after Miss Tarth married Mr. Giantsbane was still a part of his aesthetic or if he had given up on it.  
  
“Mr. Lannister’s grief-beard was probably a good 75% of the reason I thought I was straight for so long,” Lyanna tells her as the reach the front of the queue and a blonde-haired teenage girl hands her a  _Hello my name is…_ sticker to fill out.  
  
“Name?” an overly perky brunette asks when Arya reaches the table herself while she tries to find a spot to stick her name tag that’s  _not_  directly on her breasts.  
  
“Stark. Arya.” She mumbles and is genuinely surprised when the two teen girls gasp.  
  
Yeah, her job is pretty cool, and sure, she’s well known, but she’s always behind the scenes and has been able to live her life basically in obscurity. So the gasps are a little unnerving.  
  
“Like. Arya Stark, the photographer?” The blonde girl asks as she leans forward with great interest.  
  
“Yeah, the one and only,” she replies with what she hopes is a genuine smile.  
  
“Oh my gods. Our staff advisor is half in love with you, I swear to gods. He insists he knew you back when you were a student here, but we’re all convinced he’s making it up, since he has no actual proof,” the brunette, whose name tag read as Brea, supplies helpfully as she crosses off Arya’s name from her list.  
  
“Oh yeah, I totally know Mr. Lannister. I practically lived in the library during my free periods for four years just to keep up with all my classwork.”  
  
The two girls look at each other and grimace, then turn towards back to Arya with decidedly unpleasant looks.  
  
“Uh. Mr. Lannister doesn’t run SAC anymore. Like, he’s still the librarian, and I love taking my free periods in the library with him, but the only extracurricular he oversees anymore is the Comic Club and that’s because they meet in the actual library. Sorry, I don’t want to make you feel like, old, because you’re like famous and way too cool to be an alumna from here.” The blonde, Nell, says.  
  
“Oh, nah it’s cool. This is my ten year reunion, it’s been a while. Who’s your advisor then?”  
  
“Oh, that would be Mr. Payne. He’s somewhere around here, actually. He’s on the alumni association board too. I’m sure you’ll see him once you get inside,” Brea offers with the smile of a poor innocent girl who clearly has no idea what type of news she just delivered.  
  
Arya is pretty sure she’s going to be sick.  
  
“Hey, Arya?” Nell asks as Arya is all but ready to turn around and leave. “Did you really know Mr. Payne, back when you were both students? I mean, I don’t mean to pry, but the way he talks about you, some of us think he must have been your boyfriend or something. We tried asking once, Brea swears she saw a picture of the two of you on his phone during a SAC meeting, but he seemed really sad when we brought it up.”  
  
Arya freezes, because she doesn’t know what to tell these two girls without spilling the whole truth, which they don’t need to know, since Podrick is apparently their teacher.  
  
“We were something. Friends. Once. It’s been a while though,” she starts. “It’s complicated girls. I’m uh, I’m gonna head on in now. Have a good night.”  
  
***  
  
She finds Lyanna and Wylla easily on the crowded dance floor and drags them over to one of the many tables that sit on the edges of the spacious ballroom.  
  
“You two need to spill everything you know about what Podrick - excuse me,  _Mr. Payne_  - has been doing these last couple years. I don’t want to make a scene and be  _that girl_ , but so help me gods I will if I have to,” Arya says angrily and her friends know enough to be a little shame faced.  
  
Wylla sighs.  
  
“It’s not much really. Pod started coming into the bar about, oh I don’t know, four years ago? I tried my best to avoid him, but I own the damn place and am there more often than not. I couldn’t just not talk to him right? It was always polite conversation, honestly, we’d talk about his master’s degree classes and that he was doing his student teaching at our old stomping grounds, pretty neutral topics. It was well over a year before he even brought you up. I never shared more than what he already knew, he’s like an excellent Facebook stalker for someone who hardly updates their page, and one day Lyanna showed up to surprise me when he was there…”  
  
“I berated him for like an hour and he took it all. We talked out our shit after that. I wouldn’t say were friends, but I don’t hate his guts completely.”  
  
“You were so rude to him last night though,” Arya says in disbelief.  
  
“Well I was fucking pissed at him last night. I never once mentioned you were back in the city permanently, but he knew you were coming to this tonight because of the Alumni Association, and probably just showed up to the bar to see if you would be there. I fucking told him not to do that, that if he wanted to talk to you that he would see you tonight, but the asshole didn’t even try to listen to me.” Lyanna explains as she stubbornly crosses her arms across her chest and purses her lips.  
  
“What the fuck Lyanna? Does everyone know he works for our old high school? Do Jon and Sansa know?”  
  
Wylla makes a  _face_  and that’s all Arya needs to see to know they did.  
  
“Podrick may have personally delivered your invitation to their place during Jon’s monthly guy’s night thing? It’s like beer and old video games and takeout from the kitchen at the bar because Hot Pie makes, and I quote, the best pulled-pork sandwiches in Kings Landing. But yeah, they knew too. Please don’t kill anyone just yet; hear him out and tell him everything,” Wylla says with a sad smile as she grabs her girlfriend’s hand and heads back to the dance floor.  
  
Lyanna stops them short.  
  
“I promise, none of this was his idea. It was a collective brainchild of everyone who has ever given a shit about you, girl. He was actually really reluctant to show up to this thing tonight; if he didn’t have to be here he probably would have flaked. You two just needed a push to get into the same room so you could actually really talk for once,” Lyanna tells her with a quick hug.  
  
“Why is this so important to everyone? I’ve made my peace with it.”  
  
The look her two friends give her is one filled with such pity that a younger Arya would have gotten angry, instead it just makes her eyes well up.  
  
“You’re fucking miserable, girl. You’ve been miserable for eight years. If anyone deserves to be stupid-happy in love, it’s you,” Lyanna echoes back Arya’s words from last night, which makes her laugh just a little.  
  
Wylla blows her a kiss as she drags Lyanna back to the dance floor, and simultaneously the two woman point vigorously towards the other side of the room where she can only assume Podrick is.  
  
Arya takes a deep breath and heads over in that direction.  
  
***  
  
She finds him helping a group of students refill the refreshment table, the one that’s not the bar and gods she could use a drink right now.  
  
It's startling just how much he hasn’t changed in the last eight years. He looks older, sure, but not in bad way. His jawline is more defined, and his smile comes even more easily than it did all those years ago, but those eyes she used to get lost in are exactly the same.  
  
It takes him a moment to realize she’s standing there awkwardly, as she bites her lip and plays with the hem of the dress Margie put her in, but once he does he quickly begs off his students and motions towards a corner so they can talk in private. His hand on the small of her back as he leads her to the unoccupied section of wall is a familiar sensation, achingly comforting, something she was sure she’d never feel again after their tear-filled breakup.  
  
The silence that hangs between them is awkward and reminiscent of the first few times they shared a study table in the library all those years ago. Just like her sophomore self, the butterflies in her stomach have gone into overdrive and they haven’t even spoken to each other yet.  
  
Arya pouts a little when the warmth of Podrick’s hand is removed from the small of her back but rolls her eyes when he leans against the wall with that grin of his plastered on his face.  
  
“Good morning, Arya,” he says, even though it’s nearly 6:30pm. It was the first thing he had ever said to her all those years ago and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t make her heart beat just a little faster.  
  
“So, uh, I hear you’re like, half in love with me,” she says in response and can’t help the giggle that escapes when he nods his head halfheartedly and shrugs.  
  
“I see you met Nell and Brea. Good girls. Can’t keep their mouths shut though.”  
  
“Oh, come on  _Mr. Payne_.” She says teasingly as she skootches herself just a little bit closer. “Admit that you put them there on purpose. You knew they would catch my name and spill the beans.”  
  
Podrick rolls his eyes at her, but grins again and reaches out to run his fingers down her left arm, goosebumps trailing in its wake.  
  
“The thought may have crossed my mind,” he says in a low voice as he steps into her space and links their fingers together for the first time in eight years.  
  
Arya stares down at their interlocked hands and can’t shake the feeling of how right this feels, and also of how much she wants to run right now.  
  
“I… I don’t know what I’m doing, Pod. I’ve been going through a lot of emotions rapid-fire here tonight. Gods, I’m just so sorry, literally about everything. Especially about how I said what I did last night, that’s not how I meant it.” She says as she looks up at him and notices just how close they really are.  
  
“Don’t be-” he starts before she cuts him off.  
  
“No. Let me do this, okay? I owe you an explanation, and it might not be a good one, but it’s what I got.”  
  
He just squeezes her fingers in reassurance.  
  
“I was scared. I was young and so  _fucking_  in love with you that the idea that you would have given up your dream job for me was terrifying.” She tells him while she does her best to maintain eye contact, though it’s hard because she feels like she’s watching his heart break all over again.  
  
“Les Mis was something you had been working towards since before you even knew me, and I wasn’t going to stand in the way of that, Podrick. I thought the right thing was to break up with you, to let you live your dream, and at the time it made sense to me. I thought I was being selfless, that I was being a mature adult, but after you left I realized that I was being selfish, because I only cared about how it would affect me.”  
  
“I kind of hated you for a while there, you know? Yeah, I understood your reasons, but godsdamn, Arya, I would have done anything for you to have changed your mind,” Pod says a few beats later, eyebrows furrowed with internal conflict.  
  
“For a while I convinced myself that you did it because you would have done it anyway in the future, but the voice in my head wouldn’t stop nagging me that that was a lie. Then I convinced myself you just needed some time to process it all and we’d work things out, but the months turned into years and other than the occasional comment on each other’s Facebooks, that was it. I never saw you, I never heard directly from you.” His voice is low and Arya can hear the hurt that seeps into every word and it kills her to know she’s the one that caused this.  
  
“Sansa and I came to one of the shows you were working on in that first year. In White Harbor,” she admits sadly.

He fixes her with a look that’s intense enough that her voice catches in her throat for a moment.  
  
“She convinced me into waiting near the back exit for you, that maybe if we had a chance to talk I could find some peace in all of this and move on. We saw you leave, and you just looked so happy to be there with all your new friends that I didn’t want to interrupt you. Sansa was literally about to yell out to you when we saw some very pretty woman throw herself at you, and you caught her and laughed with her and she fit right under your arm and  _fuck_  you looked  _so good together_  I thought I was going to throw up. You’d been gone for six months, Podrick. I cried for weeks after that.”  
  
When she looks down she realizes that through all of this, Podrick still hasn’t let go of her hand, and that his thumb is running little absentminded circles across her knuckles like he did years ago. Arya feels the tears building up in her eyes as she rapidly blinks them away.  
  
“I wish I could say I was as abstinent as a monk in the last eight years, but I’m not going to lie to you about that. Every single relationship I’ve attempted has crashed and burned, though. But you didn’t see what you thought you did. I remember that night, because even if I didn’t  _see_   _you_ , I could  _sense you_ , somehow. I felt you near and I thought my loneliness was playing games with my head. I thought I was going crazy Arya, because I couldn’t find you after the show.”  
  
Arya knew what he meant. That whole night she had been riled up with the unexplainable energy she always felt when Podrick was near. Her knees bounced through the whole production of Les Mis and she was pretty sure Sansa was going to murder her in their hotel room that night, she disrupted the experience so much.  
  
“That night in White Harbor was my friend Jocelyn’s first night performing the role of Cosette, and she nailed it. A whole group of us were going to celebrate together after the show, and Jocelyn’s boyfriend met us there. Kyle proposed that night, their wedding was beautiful, and their son is adorable. I can show you pictures later if you would like,” Podrick tells her as he leans in closer. She can feel his warm breath on her neck as he talks so lowly that she must lean in herself to hear him over the steady beat of the bass.  
  
“Oh my gods, we’re a mess,” Arya says with a laugh that Podrick returns with a shake of his head.  
  
One moment they are laughing together, and in the next she finds that their laughter has died down in order to fully take the other in.  
  
Later she’ll admit to not being sure who made the first move, but the space in between them closes rapidly as they draw each other into a shared orbit. The first press of lips is hesitant, soft and gentle and slow, but then she drapes her arms around his shoulders and Podrick is pulling her flush to him as he backs her into the wall with eight years of urgency.  
  
She melts right into him just like she always did, and kissing Pod has never felt this good, except for all the times that it did. And while it’s different, it’s also exactly the same as it’s always been. Arya feels tears escape her pressed-too-tight-eyes, and she gives a shaky laugh as Podrick pulls away just enough to wipe them away before he cups her jaw and kisses her again soundly. This kiss is all tongue and teeth and it makes her knees go weak.  
  
“I missed you,” he mumbles against her lips as he caresses her cheek with one calloused hand while the other finds its way to her waist.  
  
She pulls away a moment later to rest her forehead against his.  
  
“I missed you too. I was so fucking dumb. I don’t expect your forgiveness, not right away, but I want  _this_  Pod,  _I want us_. I love you.”  
  
“I forgave you the moment you said you heard I was half in love with you, because all I could think was that I was full in love with you and have been since I was eighteen. I love you, Arya, and I want us too,” Pod says before pressing his lips to hers again, albeit much more chaste than before, now that the room is settling down and people are making their way to the buffet lines.  
  
“How long do you have to stay at this thing?” she asks with a wry grin 15 minutes later after they have received their congratulations from Lyanna and Wylla and stand wrapped up in each other near the end of the line.  
  
“Uh, I don’t? I helped with the set up and made sure the students knew what their jobs were tonight, but Arianne Martell - she’s the other advisor who teaches in the history department - offered to be the one that stuck around all night with the students. Tonight was always going to go one of two ways for me anyways.”  
  
“Oh yeah, which ways?”  
  
Podrick laughs.  
  
“Like this,” he says as he gestures to their shared space. “Or with a drink in my face. Sansa and Jon made a bet on it. Sansa won, if you’re wondering.”  
  
“Oh, well. I was just wondering if you had to be here all night, because we have eight years of time to make up for and I figured we could to work on that tonight.” She dimples up at him with a wicked gleam in her eyes and giggles at how quickly Pods face flushes red, as if he didn’t just have her pushed up against the wall.  
  
The giggle turns into a full-on laugh when he grabs her hand and basically starts to drag her to the front of the building, eager to get back to his place, or hers, and do all the things he’s thought about over the last eight years.  
  
“That sounds like an excellent use of time. Lead the way, Miss Stark.”  
  
“It would be my pleasure, Mr. Payne.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I really love this 'verse and would not be opposed to creating more content for it in the future, regardless of it being cute and fluffy fic from when they were originally together or angsty feels while they are broken up. 
> 
> You can catch me on tumblr at bex-xo where I blog about a variety of things!


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